Triggers (35 page)

“Don’t you have any gloves?” Jan said.

“Did,” the man said. “Don’t.”

Jan pulled off her bright red ski mittens and proffered them. “Here.”

His scraggly eyebrows went up. “Seriously?”

“Sure. I can get another pair.”

Eric put his arm around her shoulder.

The man took them with his left hand andwith his right he grasped Jan’s now-naked hand and shook it. “Thank you, miss. Thank you.”

Jan didn’t flinch; she didn’t pull away from the contact. She let him hold her hand for a few seconds. “You’re welcome.”

“Well,” he said, looking again at the wreckage, “just wanted to see how the cleanup was going. Gotta get back to my usual spot.”

Eric looked at Jan just in time to see her eyebrows go up. “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” she said.

“Yup. I was one of the last to go over there. Just eighteen.”

Eric was intrigued. “And you’re there every day?”

The old man nodded. “With my friends.”

“Other vets?”

“No,” he said. “My friends. On the wall. Their names. I point ’em out to people, tell ’em stories about them—those that need to hear ’em. Young folk, folk that don’t know what it was like. Can’t let people forget.”

“Darby,” said Jan. “And David. And Bob.”

The man looked just as surprised as Eric felt. “And Jimbo,” he said. “Don’t forget big Jimbo.”

Jan nodded. “And Jimbo, too.”

The old man looked like he wanted to ask her a million questions—but then his face changed, and he nodded, as if the questions had been answered. “You’re a good person, miss.”

“So are you,” she said, and then Eric’s heart skipped a beat when she added one more word, a name—
his
name: “Jack.”

Jack looked startled, but then an almost beatific calm came over his face. He smiled, put on his new mittens, and started shuffling away.

“You’ve never met him,” Eric said. He’d formulated it in his mind as a question but it came out as a statement.

She shook her head.

“But you know him now.”

“As well as you know me.”

Eric turned and looked back across the Ellipse, toward the Washington Monument. Jack was getting further away.

“Why do you suppose that happened?” he asked.

Jan put her hands in her coat pockets, presumably to keep them
warm, but then she pulled them out again and looked them over, turning them palm up then palm down. “He touched me,” she said. And then: “I touched him.”

Eric frowned. “When Josh Latimer died, the chain was broken. I was connected to you, but you weren’t connected to anyone. And so—”

“And so my mind sought a new connection,” said Jan.

“But he wasn’t the first person to touch you since Latimer died,” Eric said.

Jan frowned, considering this, and Eric frowned, too, recalling her memories, and then they both said, simultaneously, “No, he wasn’t.”

And Jan went on: “But he was the first
unlinked
person. Everyone else who touched me—you, Nikki Van Hausen, and Professor Singh—was already linked to somebody.”

“What about the MRI technician?”

“He was wearing blue latex gloves. And, anyway, I’m not sure he touched me.”

“We should go after Jack,” Eric said and he started to walk south.

Jan reached out with her arm—the one with the tiger tattoo hidden beneath her clothes, although they both knew it was there—and stopped him. “No,” she said, turning to look at where the White House had been, “we shouldn’t.”

MARINE
One
—the president’s helicopter—landed on LT’s rooftop helipad. Seth was strapped to a gurney and loaded on board for the flight to Camp David. He was accompanied by Dr. Alyssa Snow and Secret Service agent Susan Dawson, and was met by a Marine honor guard upon landing.

Mrs. Jerrison was already at Camp David. Seth insisted on being taken to Aspen Lodge—the presidential residence—rather than the infirmary, and was gently transferred to the king-sized four-poster bed there. A roaring fire was already going in the bedroom’s fireplace. The large window had its curtains drawn back, giving a magnificent view of the countryside, even if most of the trees—poplars and birches and maples—had long since lost their leaves.

Seth lay in the bed, his head propped up enough that he could stare into the flames, thinking about the speech he was going to give later today.

One must learn from history, Seth had often told his students—and sometimes not even from American history. In 1963, a terrorist group
called the
Front de Libération du Québec
planted bombs in several Canadian military facilities and in an English-language neighborhood of Montreal. Later FLQ attacks included bombings at McGill University, the Montreal Stock Exchange, and the home of Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau. Then, in October 1970, the FLQ kidnapped the British trade commissioner, James Cross, and the Québec minister of labor, Pierre Laporte.

Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s charismatic prime minister—who had been a thorn in the side of Johnson and Nixon—had finally had enough. When asked how far he’d go to put down the terrorists, he said, “Just watch me.” And the world did, as he invoked Canada’s War Measures Act, rolled out tanks and troops, suspended civil liberties, and arrested 465 people without charge or trial.

Laporte was ultimately found dead: the FLQ had slashed his wrists, put a bullet through his skull,
and
strangled him—in the first political assassination in Canada since 1868. But it never happened again: in all the decades since, there’d never been another significant terrorist event on Canadian soil. Lone crazed gunmen, yes, but organized acts by terrorists cells, no.

Just watch me.

Seth continued to stare into the flames.

JACK
was back at his station, back at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The place’s name was the one thing that bothered him about it: you usually think of vets as soldiers who survived a battle, but the 58,272 names engraved here were the Americans who had died in that swampy nation, fighting a pointless war.

Jack was grateful for the nice new ski mittens that pretty woman had given him, and he was wearing them now. He didn’t know why she had his memories, but he was glad she did. The dead soldiers named here understood, and so did those who’d survived, and, he imagined, many of those who’d been to Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya understood, too—but it was so hard to share what it had been like with those who had
never seen combat, those who had never tasted war. At least that woman, Janis, understood now, too.

There were always people on the Mall, but Jack imagined fewer would stop at the Vietnam Memorial today. Instead, just as he himself had earlier, they’d hang around the places that had been in the news lately: the Lincoln Memorial and the charred rubble that had been the White House.

The main part of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial consisted of two polished black stone walls that joined at an oblique angle. The west wall pointed to the Lincoln Memorial and the east one to the Washington Monument. The walls were only eight inches high at their ends but rose along their 250-foot lengths to be over ten feet tall where they met.

Someone was approaching now. Jack always waited to see what each person needed. Some people knew how the wall worked—the soldiers were listed chronologically by date of death—and could find their loved one’s name incised in the stone. Others needed help, and if they seemed lost, he’d show them how to use the index books that told you which of the 144 panels had a particular name on it. Others still needed someone to listen, or someone to talk to. Whatever they needed, Jack tried to provide it. And for those who didn’t know, who didn’t understand, he told stories.

The approaching man was black and about Jack’s age—maybe a vet himself or maybe the brother of one. Jack watched as the man found the name he was looking for—it was about shoulder-high on the wall. Not many people left flowers in the winter, but this fellow did, a small bouquet of roses. Jack waited a minute then walked over to speak to him.

“Someone special?” Jack asked.

And, of course, the answer was “yes.” It was always “yes”—everyone listed here was special.

“My best friend,” the man said. “Tyrone. His number came up, and he had to go. I was lucky; mine never did.”

“Tell me about him,” Jack said.

The man lifted his shoulders a bit as if daunted by the task. “I don’t know where to begin.”

Jack nodded. He took the bright red mitten off his right hand and offered that hand to the man. “My name’s Jack. I was there in 1971 and ’72.”

The man wasn’t wearing gloves. “Frank,” he said. He shook Jack’s hand for several seconds.

“Tell me about the last time you saw Tyrone,” Jack said. The memory of that event—Tyrone’s farewell party, at his favorite bar—came to Jack as soon as he asked about it, but he let Frank recount the story anyway, listening to every word.

BESSIE
Stilwell was scared. The Army colonel who had intercepted her and Darryl at Andrews Air Force Base had taken them to Camp David—and then locked them in Dogwood, a large guest cottage on the grounds there. She hadn’t been allowed to go to Luther Terry Memorial Hospital to see her son, and hadn’t been allowed to speak to anyone except Colonel Barstow and Darryl.

She understood what was going on: as soon as Barstow had gotten her and Darryl into his car, the memories of President Jerrison’s phone call to Secretary Muilenburg asking him to have his staff intercept them had come back to her. They were prisoners here, cut off from the rest of the world. The president was going to go ahead with his plan; he wasn’t about to let a little old lady interfere.

According to the framed photos on the walls, German chancellor Helmut Kohl had stayed in this cottage during the Clinton administration, Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda had stayed here during the Bush years, and British prime minister David Cameron had used this place when Obama was president. The cottage had a large, luxuriously appointed living area and four giant bedrooms, so she couldn’t really complain about the quality of the accommodations. But her cell phone had been confiscated, and so had Darryl’s BlackBerry, there were no computers—although Darryl had pointed out where they had previously been installed—and the phone could only reach the Camp David operator. And, of course, the doors were guarded, so they couldn’t leave.

Bessie didn’t need much sleep—five hours a night was all she normally took since her husband had died. And so she woke up before Darryl emerged from his room, and she went into the living area and sat in a nice rocking chair, looking through a window at the beautiful countryside. She concentrated on Seth’s memories, trying to find something—anything—in them she could use. But it was, she had learned, all about triggers: unless something brought forth a memory, the memory was hidden. Ask her what she knew about Seth Jerrison and the answer was nothing; ask her what his birthday was, or what make his first car had been, or whether he preferred his toilet paper to hang over or under the roll, and she could dredge the answer up.

She hunted and hunted, thinking about
this,
about
that,
then about something else, again and again.

At last, frustrated, she did what she always did when she needed guidance. She prayed. God, she knew, understood that she had arthritis and wouldn’t mind that she didn’t go down on her knees. She just sat in the chair, closed her eyes, and said, “O Lord, I need your help…”

And after a moment, her eyes opened wide.

Ask and ye shall receive.

She’d already been told she couldn’t speak with President Jerrison. But maybe, somehow, there was a way to get a message to him—and him alone.

Perhaps a letter? She got up from the chair and shuffled over to the elegant antique writing desk—it pleased her that it was probably older than she herself was. She found some stationery in a drawer, and a retractable ballpoint pen, but—

But she couldn’t trust that anything she wrote down, even if she put it in a sealed envelope, wouldn’t be read by others before the president saw it. If only there was some way to send him a private message…

And it came to her.

Of course.

So simple.

You take any three numbers that add up to thirteen…

BESSIE
opened the door to the cottage, letting in a blast of cool morning air. The blond, brown-eyed Army officer stationed outside spun on his heel, and said, “Can I help you with something, ma’am?”

“Are you normally here, young man?”

“Someone will be on guard all day, ma’am.”

“No, I mean, are you normally part of the Camp David staff?”

“No, ma’am. I’ve been temporarily assigned here; I’m usually stationed at the Pentagon.”

“Ah,” said Bessie. They weren’t going to let her talk to anyone who wasn’t already in the know, it seemed. “I need you to deliver this to the president,” she said, handing him a sealed envelope; she’d found some nice linen ones in the same drawer as the Camp David stationery.

“I can’t leave my post, ma’am, but I’ll call for someone else to come and get it.” He took the envelope from her.

“It’ll go straight to the president himself?”

“Well, ma’am, I’m sure there’s a process. It’ll be turned over to his staff.”

Bessie shook her head. “That’s not good enough, young man. I want you to take it to him—you personally. Call for someone else to stand here, but you deliver it yourself, do you understand?”

“I—that’s not how it’s normally done, ma’am.”

Bessie rallied all her strength. “These aren’t normal times, are they? Surely you understand that the president brought me here for a reason. You wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for him not getting an important message from me in time, now, would you?”

He seemed to consider this, then: “No, ma’am.”

“So you’ll personally see that he gets it?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll take it directly to the residence.”

“You promise?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Bessie smiled. “Thank you.” She closed the door and turned around just in time to see Darryl Hudkins emerging from his room. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on yesterday, although Bessie’s luggage had been waiting for her when she’d arrived here; someone had fetched her things from the Watergate.